UN POLLUTION TALKS GET DOWN AND DIRTY

A world keen to slow global warming, but not if it carries an economic price, will sit down this week in Buenos Aires to the unenviable task of trying to make that happen.

In the first followup to the United Nations' landmark global climate talks in Kyoto last December, negotiators will set about trying to put Kyoto's promises--particularly a pledge by developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions--into effect.

The outcome could have a direct effect on Americans' living standards. The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration warned this month that household energy costs could jump $335 or more annually and that gasoline prices could increase at least 14 cents a gallon as a result of the agreement.

No one expects it will be easy or that the Buenos Aires meeting will produce the kind of breakthroughs made in Japan.

"Just saying they were going to reduce was difficult. Now putting the meat on the bones in this type of negotiating format is going to be very difficult," said Frank Maisano, spokesman for the Global Climate Coalition.

The coalition, a U.S. industry lobbying group, is strongly opposed to the Kyoto agreement, which requires that rich developed countries--the world's major polluters--begin cutting emissions before the rest of the world does.

Environmentalists and the Clinton administration, however, call progress in the Buenos Aires talks key to ensuring that a world potentially threatened by global warming begins to act in time.

Opponents "are prepared to declare Buenos Aires a failure, but it's going to happen whether or not developing countries take on commitments," promised Daniel Lashof, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The talks could not have come at a worse time for many countries. Growing world economic unrest has socked Russia and much of Asia, threatened Brazil and left other countries wondering how they can afford often expensive new technology needed to cut emissions from industry and automobiles.

Scientists, however, say waiting to cut greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide will saddle nations with even higher costs in the future.

Over the last century, scientists say, the world's temperature has slowly crept upward, the result of increasing concentrations of polluting gases in the atmosphere.

If emissions are not dramatically cut, some scientists predict, melting of the planet's polar ice caps could cause widespread flooding and affect agriculture worldwide.

Some environmentalists say tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever could move into temperate climates, including the United States.

"This, in my view, is the biggest environmental problem facing humanity and one of the biggest problems facing humanity-- period," said Fred Krupp, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund.

"In that context, any forward motion we get out of Buenos Aires will be good," he said.

At the Nov. 2-13 meetings, negotiators will try to establish mechanisms to put into effect a promise by developed nations to cut their emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by the period 2008-12.

As part of the agreement, the U.S. must cut emissions by 7 percent, much of Europe by 8 percent, and Canada, Hungary, Japan and Poland by 6 percent.

Among the likely mechanisms is a system of emissions trading, in which rich industrialized nations, like the U.S., could buy rights to pollute from poorer and cleaner undeveloped nations who need the cash rather than their pollution allowances.

The U.S., which backs the trading program and pushed for its incorporation into the Kyoto agreement, since 1995 has run its own successful national trading system for sulfur dioxide emissions by power plants. The nation's largest plants, which must pay more to pollute more, have cut emissions by nearly half since 1990.

European nations, however, believe such emissions trading should have a limit, to ensure that rich nations cannot continue to pollute unhindered.

Environmentalists also worry that poor nations might have incentive to overstate their emissions to earn more trading credits.

Another idea to be tackled at Buenos Aires is the so-called clean development mechanism, in which industrialized countries can seek pollution credits by helping poor nations buy and use clean industrial technology.

Negotiators also hope to analyze the troublesome issue of how to penalize countries that fail to live up to their agreements.

"What we're looking for out of this conference is a pragmatic work plan that resolves some of the issues about how to bring (the Kyoto protocol) to operation," Lashof said.

The protocol excludes developing nations from the first round of cutbacks, a sore point for the U.S., which fears industry and jobs will flee overseas.